Alex Kuno’s Fairytales Exposed in Recent Work

Though Alex Kuno’s current work is still brimming with fairytale imagery and carries both a grim and satirical mythology, these new mixed-media pieces offer a decidedly frenzied, more toiled spin. These works take the familiar children and beasts and expose their innards, a blend of seemingly floral and unsettling organic matter. With Kuno’s playful vibrancy, each exposed being is more absorbing than repelling. Kuno was last featured on HiFructose.com here.

It seems that Kuno’s world has taken a more vulnerable turn. Though he’s always made work that’s served as “playful investigations into the sometimes violent imaginings that are part of the universal experience of childhood,” the evolution of his fictional world pushes that anxiety to a new, melancholic place. As he’s said in the past: “I’m specifically interested in how the longings and fears and dark stories from our early years inform our perspectives in adulthood and shape our grown-up anxieties and understanding about real-world, large-scale cultural, economic and environmental change.”

He accomplishes the playfulness with his blend of materials, from graphite and chalk to watercolor and ink—that’s just within one piece.